Bruschi just glad he's still playing

SUPER BOWL XLII - GIANTS VS. PATRIOTS

After suffering a stroke in 2005, Tedy Bruschi never figured he'd be playing again.

January 31, 2008|By David Whitley, Sentinel Staff Writer

GLENDALE, Ariz. -- A lot has happened since the last time Tedy Bruschi walked onto a Super Bowl field.

He turned 32, then 33, then 34. He led New England in tackles. He lost sight in one eye and was crippled.

No wonder he's glad to be back.

"It sounds ludicrous to play football after a stroke," Bruschi said. "The sentence is just not used a lot."

It's being used a lot this week. There have been a lot of comeback stories in Super Bowl history. Few have involved a linebacker who lost the ability to write his name, much less tackle large human beings.

Things like that happen when you have a stroke. Somebody in America has suffered one since you began reading this story.

It happens to about 780,000 people a year, according to the American Heart Association. In 2005, only one of the victims had just won a Super Bowl.

New England beat Philadelphia 24-21 in Jacksonville. Bruschi then flew to Honolulu for his first Pro Bowl appearance.

Three days later, the lights went out.

"Before I could sit back and enjoy that win, I was fighting for my life," Bruschi said.

He awoke with a ferocious headache. His left side was numb and the room was spinning. He crawled out of bed and his wife dialed 911.

Bruschi didn't know it at the time, but a blood clot had traveled from his leg through a small hole in his heart and lodged in the back of his head. The blood supply to part of his brain had been cut off.

It couldn't be a stroke. People like Bruschi aren't supposed to have strokes. He was young, his body was fit enough to earn him millions of dollars.

There are early signs of impending strokes. Intercepting Donovan McNabb in a Super Bowl is not one of them.

"Don't worry, Tedy. We'll get you back out there," a cardiologist told him.

The guy must have been a Patriots season-ticket holder.

"I wanted to strangle him," Bruschi said. "I wasn't thinking about that at all. I just wanted to function well as a family man again."

A month later, a device was inserted to seal the hole in his heart. The thought of playing again was so remote that Bruschi accepted a front-office job with the Patriots.

His real job was rehabilitation. The motor skills that once let him run down quarterbacks weren't good enough to let him pick up his son.

"It was a gradual process, from learning to write my name again to walking properly," Bruschi said. "I think my eyesight might have been the last thing to come back."

Not long after that, his desire to play returned. Players come back from torn ligaments and broken bones all the time. The mere thought of returning from a stroke seemed ridiculous.

About one-fifth of stroke victims never even come back to life. Bruschi's doctors assured him he wasn't risking more damage by playing. That didn't exactly make his wife feel better.

To this day Bruschi observes a three-second rule. No matter how tired he is or how many players are top of him, he gets up within three seconds after the play. That lets Heidi Bruschi know that little patch in her husband's heart hasn't come loose.

Before that became an issue, Bruschi had to convince Bill Belichick he could still play. He initially planned to sit out the entire 2005 season. Halfway through, his body started feeling like it did that night in Jacksonville.

Bruschi was in the lineup by Game No. 8. Two weeks later he made 10 tackles against Buffalo.

"When you realize what could have happened, getting back was an incredible journey," he said. "Especially getting back to playing a high level of football."

Bruschi knows he was lucky. If that clot had lodged a few centimeters differently, he could have been paralyzed or worse. Though strokes can strike anyone, people with high blood pressure and other ailments are most at risk.

Bruschi started working with the American Stroke Association and started Tedy's Team, which hopes to make people more cognizant of stroke warning signs.

Just getting on the field has raised a lot of awareness. What Lance Armstrong is to people battling cancer, Bruschi is to people recovering from strokes. He wrote a book, "Never Give Up: My Stroke, My Recovery and My Return to the NFL."

If you didn't know better, you'd swear he never left. Bruschi led the Patriots in tackles this season.

"He has great energy and enthusiasm for the game," Belichick said. "Any player and coach on the team feel the positive vibe he gives off."

Bruschi has become New England's emblem, almost literally. The Minuteman logo on the team's helmets was once said to be patterned after Elvis.

Now people say it's a profile of another icon who defied death. Only this one really is alive.